Urmia Lake Drying Crisis: Scrutinize and Expose the Misinterpretation

On the past decade and half, the Urmia Lake Level has dramatically declined about 7m than the last longtime mean level. Because the lake is relatively shallow, the continuous falling of the lake water level dwindled the lake's surface area more than 70% and the released areas leaved by the salty flat. Continuing this trend lead to dry the lake wholly as soon and cause the serious negative environmental and social impacts.Calculating of the lake water reservoir budget and the share of causing factor on the Lake’s drying shows that the declining of lake level and dwindling of the surface area have the relation about 60% with the climate change (precipitation declining, temperature and evaporation increases) and about 30% with overusing of underground water and the remand shares likely relate to storage and diversion of water by the dams and highway construction. This is in contrast with the common misinterpretation who get connected the Lake’s drying principally to construction of Lake’s causeway and/or dam’s utilization.

کلیدواژه ها:

Urmia Lake drying crisis ، water level declining ، drought ، climate change ، cause